B061-0005
Continental-scale and decadal patterns in animal phenology discovered using the Arctic Animal Movement Archive
Friday, 11 December 2020
Poster
Sarah Cain Davidson1,2, Gil Bohrer1, Scott LaPoint2,3, Eliezer Gurarie4,5, Peter Mahoney6, Jyoti S. Jennewein7, Emma Greier4, Ophélie Couriot4,8, Todd E. Katzner9, Allicia Kelly10 and Mark Hebblewhite5, (1)Ohio State University, Civil, Environmental & Geodetic Engineering, Columbus, OH, United States, (2)Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, Migration, Radolfzell, Germany, (3)Columbia University, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Palisades, NY, United States, (4)University of Maryland College Park, Biology, College Park, MD, United States, (5)University of Montana, Ecosystem and Conservation Sciences, Missoula, MT, United States, (6)University of Washington Seattle Campus, Environmental and Forest Sciences, Seattle, WA, United States, (7)University of Idaho, Natural Resources and Society, Moscow, ID, United States, (8)National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, Annapolis, United States, (9)U.S. Geological Survey, Forest and Rangeland Ecosystem Science Center, Boise, ID, United States, (10)Government of Northwest Territories, Department of Environment and Natural Resources, Fort Smith, NT, Canada
Abstract:
Data from animal-borne sensors offer a growing source of global remote sensing monitoring data. Combining these data allows ecologists to answer questions about biodiversity and long-term, large-scale patterns in animal behavior in relation to changing environments. The Arctic Animal Movement Archive (AAMA) is a collaborative, growing collection of over 200 terrestrial, avian and marine animal tracking studies from the Arctic and Subarctic, documenting over 15 million locations and other sensor observations of 8,000 animals of 96 species over more than 3 decades. The AAMA is hosted on Movebank, a global research platform for bio-logging data that includes Env-DATA, a tool library that links animal observations with NASA remote sensing and weather reanalysis model data products. Through the AAMA, data collected by hundreds of institutions are stored in a standard format and can be accessed publicly or upon request. Support for controlled-access data is critical to integrating wildlife monitoring data that cannot be made public due to legal restrictions or conservation status, and for sharing near-real-time data.
To demonstrate the utility of the AAMA, we gained preliminary insight into the climate change response of Arctic animals by compiling large datasets of animal occurrences, identifying demographic events from these data, and annotating these observations and events with environmental data from remote sensing. In golden eagles, we identified environmental drivers of long-term trends in the date of arrival to summering grounds, revealing influences of latitude and Pacific Decadal Oscillation. In caribou, we found that date of parturition (giving birth) shows more rapid change in northern populations. In terrestrial mammals, we found differing responses in movement rates to seasonal weather conditions within and across trophic levels, for example with higher summer temperatures, movement rates increased in moose but decreased in black bears and wolves. Finally, as a test of tag technology, we validated tag-derived temperature observations against ECMWF-modelled temperature estimates.
As climate change and human disturbance increasingly alter the Arctic, the AAMA serves as a baseline for documenting whether and how animals respond, and to recognize early signals of Arctic ecosystem changes.
